Country gardener nurturing people, plants – and wildlife

About

Join me in my almost out-of-control garden where I try to grow as much food, fruit and flowers as I can – whilst tiptoeing around the wildlife. This summer we’ve had five hedgehogs born in a nest in the corner of the orchard, under an old duck hut. Our mini-wood has been home to a pair of tawny owl fledglings all summer. No doubt they are here because of a thriving colony of short-tailed voles. We garden lightly, with many bramble-filled corners, always aware that we share this special place. Although it is my garden- it is their home too. And so this wild and somewhat weedy place, is rightly called Bramble Garden.

We planted the trees as saplings 28 years ago when we bought an acre of land and a tumbledown house from a farmer.

Wild roses have scrambled to the top of the trees. Their bright red hips provide food for birds in the winter.

Cow parsley and wild flowers grow under the trees in spring. This is our view from the summerhouse.

Stitchwort and violets grow in abundance in the semi-shade.

Honeysuckle scents the air in the summer. Much loved by bees, butterflies and moths.

Scented climbing roses scramble along the boundary fences and mingle with froths of cow parsley. A heart-sing combination!

Seed heads are left standing. They provide a habitat for the smallest of creatures. Can you spot the tiny spider, bottom right of the photo.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of my garden. If you come to visit, don’t expect perfection. There’s probably something living in that messy log pile and untidy bramble patch. And as far as I’m concerned, everyone’s welcome here!

A favourite poem that makes me think of where we live. We are a mile from the nearest village, on the top of a windswept ridge, in the middle of farming country.

It faces west, and round the back and sides

High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,

And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks

Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish

(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants)

To overtop the apple-trees hard by.

Red roses, lilacs, variegated box

Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers

As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these

Are herbs and esculents; and farther still

A field; then cottages with trees, and last

The distant hills and sky.

Thomas Hardy

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47 thoughts on “About”

Hello Karen. Thank you so much for the 5* review you gave for The Organic Gardening Podcast. I’m so glad you enjoy it, and find it inspiring as well as useful. Chris and I certainly have fun making it, and we’ve found some interesting guests to share their organic gardening passions. We were shortlisted for Best Gardening Podcast in 2019, but to receive your glowing review meant just as much to us. Thank you! Warm wishes Sarah Brown, Garden Organic.

Thank you Sarah. I’m finding the podcast a really cheerful listen for the horrible cold days of winter. If I can’t be out there gardening, I feel I can at least be listening to gardening. I love your chats with Chris and feel like I’m sitting in the same room, nodding my head and joining in. I’ve been an organic gardener for the past few years. Before that I used growmore, like everyone used to. Without thinking of the consequences. Now I am concerned about the creatures living in my soil, as well as all the spiders, woodlice, worms, slugs, snails. We are learning to treat other creatures with respect and realise they have a place in the web if life. Slugs are food for hedgehogs and birds, for example. You have tapped into this renewed interest in organic gardening, and I feel as if I learn something new every time I listen. Good luck with everything. All the best. Karen x

Hi Karen
Many thanks for your presentation on Thursday – very informative – and great to be supporting Rainbows.
You were going to send me the list of plants mentioned so I can forward to Members.
Kind regards
Vernon

How wonderful to have a family of hedgehogs! I do like the sound of your garden! We don’t have quite that much space here in our garden in South Staffordshire, but do like to ‘garden lightly’ as well, & keep space for the wildlife.

Thank you Sue. They are still in the garden tonight. I hope they stay with us for the winter. Plenty of protection from the weather here. And many many mice! Thanks for reading and for getting in touch. Sorry for the delay replying. I’ve only just spotted your comment.

Karen, Thank you for visiting my blog and liking several posts. I really enjoy your photography, it is a medium that I am always trying to improve. Hopefully, some day, I will be as good as you.
Keep posting,
Susan

Ah, thank you Susan. That’s so kind of you to say so. I just use a camera phone to be honest. I’ve always got it in my pocket in case the children ring and need me- so I’ve always got it to hand when I see something of interest in the gardening world. If I had a fancy camera, I am sure it would always be at home when I needed it. All the best- Karen 🙂

I’m delighted to have discovered your blog through your having visited a page of mine – wonderful photos. I may have missed something, but is it possible to be notified of new posts via email? I can’t see to find that option, and I’m hopeless at keeping up via the WP reader

Gosh! I think I can help! Go into the dashboard, then ‘appearance’. You will then get several options, of which one is ‘widgets’. Open this, and there you will find lots of things you may or may not wish to include on your site, including ‘follow by email’. Drag this to the right hand side – and it will appear on the side bar of your blog. I’ve never been a techie before! This may be the first and last time.

Karen,
You should be able to find a email follow widget through you dashboard. I think it’s in settings. I found you through a like you gave my garden page. Love your garden pictures. Let me know if you get the email follow set up. I’d love to add you.

Karen lovely blog and buitifull garden. I listen to you on radio Leicester. I followed your advise with my dalia tubers and wrapped them in moss in the shed but instead of going to sleep for winter they have all new shoots growing. Where have I gone wrong or is this what they ment to be doing?

Hello and thank you for listening, and reading. It’s been a very mild winter and dahlias have started to sprout if they have been kept too warm and damp-ish. What I’d do now is pot them up into multi purpose compost. Move them to a frost free greenhouse, or spare room window. When the shoots are 4” long, slice them off taking a sliver of the tuber with them. Pot them into 3” pots and grow them on. Plant them out at the end of May. You will have lots of new plants that will flower this year. The mother tubers will produce new shoots and you can plant them out as normal when there’s no more frosts. This year when you dig up your dahlias, turn them upside down to drain the stems, leave to dry in the greenhouse for a week or two. Brush off all the soil. Put them, right way up, in the shed covered in dry compost, or perlite. Keep frost free and dry. The moss might have absorbed moisture from the atmosphere and caused them to come back into growth. All is not lost though. Get back to me if you need any further info. And please keep listening as management are trying to do away with gardening on the radio. We have to have a lot more music now, and hardly any talking! Not sure how that is going to work. There will probably be an outcry. Just remembered… don’t forget to wait until the dahlias are frosted once and the foliage has turned black. This sends instructions to the tubers to go into dormancy. If you cut them back while still green, they will shoot.

Karen —
My thanks to you for visiting my blog and for giving me the opportunity to see yours. I have walked around in it a bit and found myself the better for it. The photographs are wonderful, and those lines from Thomas Hardy are exactly what I needed this morning.